summit itself is covered with snow--he added: "I see it
plainly!" Karstens, looking where he pointed, saw it also, and, whipping
out the field-glasses, one by one we all looked, and saw it distinctly
standing out against the sky. With the naked eye I was never able to see
it unmistakably, but through the glasses it stood out, sturdy and
strong, one side covered with crusted snow. We were greatly rejoiced
that we could carry down positive confirmation of this matter. It was no
longer necessary for us to ascend the North Peak.

The upper glacier also bore plain signs of the earthquake that had
shattered the ridge. Huge blocks of ice were strewn upon it, ripped off
the left-hand wall, but it was nowhere crevassed as badly as the lower
glacier, but much more broken up into serac. Some of the bergs presented
very beautiful sights, wind-carved incrustations of snow in cameo upon
their blue surface giving a suggestion of Wedgwood pottery. All tints
seemed more delicate and beautiful up here than on the lower glacier.

On the 5th June we advanced to about seventeen thousand five hundred
feet right up the middle of the glacier. As we rose that morning slowly
out of the flat in which our tent was pitched and began to climb the
steep serac, clouds that had been gathering below swept rapidly up into
the Grand Basin, and others swept as rapidly over the summits and down
upon us. In a few moments we were in a dense smother of vapor with
nothing visible a couple of hundred yards away. Then the temperature
dropped, and soon snow was falling which increased to a heavy snow-storm
that raged an hour. We made our camp and ate our lunch, and by that time
the smother of vapor passed, the sun came out hot again, and we were all
simultaneously overtaken with a deep drowsiness and slept. Then out into
the glare again, to go down and bring up the remainder of the stuff, we
went, and that night we were established in our last camp but one. We
had decided to go up at least five hundred feet farther that we might
have the less to climb when we made our final attack upon the peak. So
when we returned with the loads from below we did not stop at camp, but
carried them forward and cached them against to-morrow's final move.

[Illustration: Third camp in the Grand Basin--17,000 feet, showing the
shattering of the glacier walls by the earthquake.

The rocks at the top of the picture are about 19,000 feet high and are
the highest rocks on the south pe